I received a phone call this morning from the IRD. It seems one of the GST returns I did from the February/March 07 period (bear in mind I do GST returns for half a dozen different entities) had an issue with it.

I vaguely recall a GST adjustment I made and a covering letter  sent to the IRD to explain the situation. Now out of the blue, some four months later I had a phone call asking for a detailed breakdown of the changes made.

The IRD costs taxpayers millions of dollars a year to run, they’ve got management for Africa and systems galore – I simply cannot understand how it can possibly take four months for them to get around to checking a GST return.

We all know what would happen if we paid an amount to the IRD four months late – late payment penalties, interest and hassles would descend upon us – shame it doesn’t work the other way around.

Almost makes you want to vote Act doesn’t it?????

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

4 Comments
  • Funny thing is that I had the complete opposite recently. The called me at 7pm on a Friday night! I was taking my wife out for dinner but took the call anyway.

    The reason they called was that I had registered as an employer the _day_ before (yes – they can be efficient) and just wanted to check that I had everything I needed and to ask if there was anything they could do for me. Yes, that is right – this is the IRD!!!

    I was pretty damned impressed actually. And now that NZ is apparently the 2nd easiest country in the world to do business in I wouild say perhaps IRD are catching on?

  • Cheers Ed – They’ll be stoked to hear that!

  • all together now.. Thanks Dave! (Henderson) for teaching IRD a thing or two about service without a snarl. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/organisation/story.cfm?o_id=89&ObjectID=10382813

  • Interesting call Grant but all he did was make them more likely to snarl at the rest of us (oh and caused them to find a new home in Christchurch)

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